SpaceX's Starship rocket reached around Earth for the first time on Monday, achieving the long-pursued milestone on the vehicle's 14th test flight despite losing one of its six Raptor engines during ascent. Shares of Space Exploration Technologies Corp. (SPCX) slipped around 1% in early trading before paring most of the loss.

The uncrewed rocket lifted off at 7:46 a.m. CT from Starbase near Brownsville, Texas. Ship 41 lost one of its six Raptor engines as it climbed, but SpaceX said the vehicle continued on a "passively safe suborbital trajectory" while engineers reviewed its systems.

Starship performs its orbital insertion burn and enters orbit of Earth for the first time pic.twitter.com/LodrSTnEnl
— SpaceX (@SpaceX) September 28, 2026

At 9:11 a.m. ET, SpaceX gave the call: "Go for orbit!" The ship then fired a single Raptor engine for its orbital insertion burn, and the company confirmed the maneuver placed Starship in orbit around Earth for the first time. SpaceX had targeted an altitude of about 275 kilometers.

A Milestone Years in the Making

Every previous Starship flight had fallen short of orbit, ending instead in splashdowns or, in some cases, the loss of the vehicle entirely. Orbit is the threshold that turns a test flight into an operational capability: a ship that cannot stay in space cannot deliver payloads, and payload delivery is where Starship's commercial role begins. Elon Musk once predicted Starship would reach orbit back in 2022. That timeline slipped repeatedly, and the program has now cost SpaceX more than $15 billion.

The Super Heavy booster, numbered 21, separated from Starship during the flight and splashed down safely in the Gulf of America shortly afterward.

Starship was expected to complete six orbits of Earth over a roughly 10-hour flight, with a splashdown planned in the Pacific Ocean west of Chile. Whether the ship completes those orbits and executes the Pacific splashdown remained the open item as the flight continued.

First Operational Payload

Monday's flight carried 26 Starlink V3 satellites, marking the first time Starship has delivered an operational payload. SpaceX confirmed the deployment on X at 9:54 a.m. ET.

"Payload deploy complete. All 26 @Starlink V3 satellites are orbit," the company posted. The satellites were released in sequence through a door on the side of the ship.

The V3 satellites are too large to fly on SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket. Each one is built to carry more than 1 terabit per second of downlink capacity, well above the current V2 Mini satellites. Monday's launch, orbital insertion, and in-sequence deployment marked the first time that full delivery chain — one only Starship can run for satellites this size — operated end to end.

Starlink remains SpaceX's largest business line, and a working Starship is central to expanding that network and lowering the cost of each satellite launch.

A Test Program Under Public Scrutiny

Monday's launch also arrived with SpaceX now trading as a public company, a shift that places the Starship program under a level of investor attention it did not face during earlier tests. The company's AI compute business has helped lift the stock recently, after SPCX dipped below $100 shortly following its IPO.

Shortly before liftoff, SpaceX posted that it is "building the infrastructure of the future, from supercomputers to Terafab to Gigasat to a new Starbase in Louisiana."